The old adage goes that you need to look backwards before moving forwards and there’s certainly been plenty of the former this week, but when the Ireland team reflected on the debacle in Murrayfield there must have been plenty to make them wish television hadn’t been invented.

With the 80 per cent possession and nought to show for it, stats ringing in their ears ever since, maybe they won’t actually want the ball against France. Although, come to think of it, that might not be such a good idea.

Any half-decent theatre director will tell you that for a tragedy to have its full effect, there must also be moments of levity, and sure enough Ireland delivered on that score with some nuggets of high-end slap-stick. Chief among them was when Donnacha Ryan momentarily got knocked out and bounced back up almost in one movement, looking for a row with whoever had hit him, only to realise it was in fact Rory Best.

One assumes it was an accident, but if it wasn’t you could say it was one of the few times Best managed to locate him in 80 minutes. It was a little vignette which summed up Ireland’s day and ranks as a definite rival to the day Girvan Dempsey rose for a high ball during a routine pasting in Paris, but instead of it landing in the bread basket, it bounced off his head and into the arms of the onrushing French forwards. You couldn’t do it if you tried.

Extremity of opinions

The extremity of opinions on the Kidney, Heaslip and the outhalf situation shows no sign of abating. It’s reached the point now where you wouldn’t be completely surprised if the starting number 10 for Saturday was either Tony Ward or a schoolboy.

Alan Quinlan’s eyebrows said it all on Against the Head. They usually do. Furrowed with deep concern, rising up in the middle like he was trying to solve Pythagoras’s Theorem, head tilted sideways to convey the seriousness of the situation and mulling over the “most unusual” behaviour of his former Munster coach made me think I’d inadvertently tuned into the serious bit on the Late Late Show.

You could tell he and Frankie Sheahan who sat along side him, wanted to break free of the shackles of hollow, televised analysis and just bellow out: “What the f*** is going on with Deccie like?”

But Frankie got all Cork conspiratorial, almost whispering that these calls don’t sound like Kidney calls, they sound like someone else’s. Who did he mean? Giovanni Trapattoni? Enda Kenny? The pope? Mario Draggi? Angela Merkle? Maybe Osama Bin Laden? Oh no sorry he’s no longer with us. Or maybe Frankie knows different?

After a few defeats as skipper, we’re almost used to seeing Jamie Heaslip dejectedly leaving the field, gazing, head-shaking at the sky, but even when he’s down in the dumps you get the feeling he’s thinking: “ Yea it’s terrible we lost, we’re all gutted, but hey I’m the captain of the Ireland!!! How cool is that?”

There was a lot of talk about his decision to conduct the coin-toss while wearing his head-phones last time out, but the rumour that he was listening to the new how do you do a team talk? app is unfounded.

Brian O’Driscoll faced the cameras last week as a show of support for Heaslip and Kidney, saying it takes time to “bed-in” and get familiar with “the drill” and that it wasn’t Deccie’s fault, it was the players and all that, you know the kind of thing, you could write it yourself, sure he nearly fell asleep saying it.

Of course he was also using the opportunity to launch a new Adidas tack-suit, sorry track-suit, making sure as he spoke to swipe the hoodie strings clear of the large three striped logo, professional to the last eh? He may not make it to Paris Fashion week with that look, but if he’s interested they are looking for extras in the new series of Love/Hate.

Need to win

Whatever is or isn’t happening on the pitch, Ireland need to beat France on Saturday, and will attempt to do so with either a rusty Paddy Jackson, who surely can’t feel confident kicking with a dodgy hamstring or a talented, speedy, but inexperienced, Ian Madigan who deserved to be included well before now. To say the least, it’s not an ideal position going in to face a team that you’ve beaten once in 10 years and who possess a dinosaur (Louis Picamoles) at number eight.

But, whatever peculiarities have contributed to Ireland’s collective mind-set recently, France must be more vulnerable now than at any other time we’ve met them, which presumably means we’ll either produce the best performance of the campaign and win or France will hammer us and we’ll all get back into our black hole again.

Whatever the result it’ll be doing well to come within a whisker of the Blackrock-Roscrea Leinster schools semi-final which was truly epic and must rank as the best match of the year so far.

Apart from St Michael’s win over Newbridge obviously.

Good luck to Fiona Coghlan and the flying Ireland women’s team against France. Allez les femmes!!